missionary – KNOM Radio Missionhttp://www.knom.org/wp
780 AM | 96.1 FM | Yours for Western AlaskaThu, 22 Feb 2018 02:41:52 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.459285469Leadership Summit Keynote Urges Hope, Resolve In Native Communityhttp://www.knom.org/wp/blog/2017/10/06/leadership-summit-keynote-urges-hope-resolve-in-native-community/
http://www.knom.org/wp/blog/2017/10/06/leadership-summit-keynote-urges-hope-resolve-in-native-community/#commentsFri, 06 Oct 2017 17:11:59 +0000http://www.knom.org/wp/?p=31409Jorie Ayyu Paoli delivered the keynote address at the Kawerak Leadership Summit in Nome. “Our community — we’re like the willow,” she said. “You can cut the willow down, you can cut it back, to try and get rid of it, but if there’s even a shred of root, it will re-grow and thrive.”]]>

Leaders young and old from around the region are gathering in Nome this week for community events, workshops and speaker sessions at the Kawerak Leadership Summit.

Update: Hear Jorie Ayyu Paoli’s full keynote address at the bottom of this post.

Keynote speaker Jorie Ayyu Paoli opens her address in Inupiaq. Not ten minutes later, attendees are already teary-eyed as she wonders out loud about her great-grandmother’s interactions with the first Covenant Church missionaries:

“When they came into our community, what were they thinking? Did they come in and love us so much? Were they so enamored with our way that they knew that this was the home they wanted to be part of? Did they see our knowledge and our culture as ways to help enrich the teachings that they were bringing?”

With questions like these, Paoli bridges past and present in an address equal parts personal history and call to action. Originally from Unalakleet — which in Inupiaq is called Uŋalaqłiq — she now serves as vice president and indigenous operations director at the First Alaskans Institute.

With representatives from several Alaska Native groups present, Paoli touches on the theme of cross-cultural understanding with a story about Uŋalaqłiq’s Native songs. She said she’d grown up believing that they’d been lost during the missionaries’ cultural suppression. But in a chance encounter, she discovered that three women from the community had moved to Kaltag to be married, and that the songs had been preserved in a sort of “Athabaskanized Inupiaq.”

“I can tell you how much it meant to me to find out that our songs and dances are alive. And I can’t imagine our community ever wanting to take away from others what has been taken away from us.”

Paoli’s positive outlook carries over into her discussion of the present and its challenges.

“For those of us who don’t have that knowledge of our language, of our traditions, that can bring a lot of shame and embarrassment. But what I say to you, that I hope all of our people can feel and know, is that that shame, that guilt, doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to those who took it from us.”

She urges Native communities to be true to their identity, to revive traditions in ways that aren’t bound by modern, Western frameworks like strategic plans or grants.

Paoli finishes with a metaphor she’d heard from a friend in Kaltag:

“He said, ‘Our community — we’re like the willow. You can cut the willow down, you can cut it back, to try and get rid of it, but if there’s even a shred of root, it will re-grow and thrive.’”

Aaron Nusuk is enthusiastic about Paoli’s message. He’s here from Koyuk to attend the conference.

“Not the usual rhetorics (sic) about how we gotta work together. It’s good to hear. This is stuff that needs to be said, and more often, to more people.”

Another person who seems to feel the same way is Lieutenant Governor Byron Mallott, who is Tlingit. He takes the podium after Paoli receives a standing ovation.

“I’m still shaking, Ayyu, I still am, from your words,” he says.

Mallott has some inspirational words of his own, asking that attendees of the conference believe their actions now can have an impact. 100 years in the future, he says:

“We will have had four or five Native governors, a majority of them women. We will be in a place where Alaska Native art, where our spirituality, where the lives we lead are respected and celebrated, and there is certainty in our society and public policy that we are here to stay.”

That confidence is on display in Paoli’s speech, which she closes with an Uŋalaqłiq song she says she learned as a way to heal.

]]>http://www.knom.org/wp/blog/2017/10/06/leadership-summit-keynote-urges-hope-resolve-in-native-community/feed/131409After Vandalism, Blessingshttp://www.knom.org/wp/blog/2017/09/01/after-vandalism-blessings/
http://www.knom.org/wp/blog/2017/09/01/after-vandalism-blessings/#respondFri, 01 Sep 2017 16:56:28 +0000http://www.knom.org/wp/?p=30846Even amid the challenges of operating a radio station in bush Alaska, such as an instance of vandalism at KNOM Studios earlier this year, our mission remains continually blessed — and continues, thanks to you.]]>

In early January, the 300 gallon tank of heating fuel used to power KNOM’s Nome studio backup generator was emptied onto the ground, seeping into the snow and underlying dirt — an act of vandalism. Removing the contaminated snow and soil was expensive, and only $25,000 of the nearly $76,000 cleanup cost was covered by insurance.

The generous contractor who worked on the cleanup, however, agreed to accept the insurance coverage amount and donated the remaining $51,000 balance. What a relief!

The FOCUS crew, gathered with some of KNOM’s staff on the Nome studios’ front steps.

Then, earlier this summer, nine Catholic FOCUS Mission volunteers visited Nome to lend a hand at Nome’s St. Joseph Catholic Church and KNOM. One of their tasks was to finish the remediation at KNOM’s oil spill site. They shoveled a large pile of gravel underneath the garage: backbreaking, dusty work they completed with joy.

Truly, Divine Providence provides — in more ways than one. In concert with your support and prayers, the KNOM mission remains continually blessed, many times over.

]]>http://www.knom.org/wp/blog/2017/09/01/after-vandalism-blessings/feed/030846Update News: Tuesday, May 22, 2012http://www.knom.org/wp/blog/2012/05/22/update-news-tuesday-may-22-2012/
Wed, 23 May 2012 02:18:55 +0000http://www.knom.org/news/wp/?p=20619-year-old Emmonak woman charged with felony assualt; vessels docking in Snake River Area pay 1/2 rate of vessels docking in harbor; fallen McKinley climber from Germany; students say culture and mentors protect against suicide; former KNOM news reporter’s book released.
http://www.knom.org/news/update-news/2012/05/22/2012-05-22-knom-update-news.mp3
]]>4583Profile: Grace at the Garbage Dumphttp://www.knom.org/wp/blog/2012/05/22/profile-grace-at-the-garbage-dump/
Wed, 23 May 2012 02:13:27 +0000http://www.knom.org/news/wp/?p=255Former KNOM news reporter Jesse Zink has published a book about his time as a missionary in South Africa.

Grace at the Garbage Dump explores his work and experience in a poor community. Zink helped patients struggling with HIV and AIDS, worked in microcredit programs, and tutored English students. He says cultural understanding was an enormous challenge in his work; the book is an attempt to help people take their own steps towards advancing cultural literacy.

Dina Sagoonick’s life growing up in Shaktoolik as a young girl was traditional, and in the ways that she and her family relied on dog teams, hunting, and trapping, it was a way of life that had sustained her ancestors for thousands of years.

And yet her life was also uniquely full of change, a window into the forces that have reshaped subsistence and the ways of life in Alaska over the past century. Her father was one of the early reindeer herders, and when missionaries came to Shaktoolik and Unalakleet to preach, they also built gardens, opened schools, forbade the Inupiaq language, and created an education system that drew Dina’s sisters away from home at an early age.

That balance between new and old is one Dina has seen shift in her lifetime. And while she enjoys the conveniences of modern life, she laments the loss of familial intimacy, of learning from her family members, and of households that did everything together. Modern life, she says, can be too easy, “too rich.”

Dina recalls learning many things from her parents and her community as she grew up, but her love for dogs is profound. “Dogs are next to people,” she says, marveling at their intelligence, their beauty, and their ability to work alongside and help their human masters.

But most important to Dina is her faith. She recalls being overcome as a young girl, berry picking with her mother and seeing a rainbow, “a token rainbow telling us the whole world won’t be covered in water, as in Noah’s time.” She credits her mother and grandmother with kindling that faith, and she continues to share it with her children and grandchildren.